


In Absence

by ActualHurry



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Minor Injuries, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 14:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13766292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualHurry/pseuds/ActualHurry
Summary: McCree doesn't appreciate being protected by someone he's no longer loyal to.





	In Absence

The smell of old blood teased McCree slowly out of his groggy unconsciousness. He opened his eyes to darkness and didn’t move from there, only spending minutes or hours measuring his breaths. He took stock of himself - there was a sharp pain he found in his side, pounding harder against his ribs with each and every little beat of his heart. His right arm ached, too, but it didn’t feel like anything severe enough to worry about, nothing similar to the pain radiating from his abdomen. Taking breaths to count the time, McCree blearily tried to be glad to know he was very much alive. Dead men didn’t hurt any more.

He should be in a motel room south of Gallup, with brown walls, cheap blinds, and an old, questionable spring mattress. There should be an ancient air conditioner rattling every couple minutes that kept him from falling asleep too deeply. But wherever he was now, it was pitch black and fucking _hot_. Now he felt the sweat making its way down his scalp and sticking the thin, papery sheets to his bare skin. More concerning was the dead silence. No A/C. No cars driving by outside. No muffled arguments through skinny walls. It was near enough to make a man go mad.

McCree rolled over and bit back the discomfort and pain as he did. It felt wrong to disrupt the quiet. Even the noise of him shuffling around was too loud to his ears. He got his right arm under his good side, ignoring the sting rocketing through the muscles, and pushed against what turned out to be the floor beneath him. No bed, just a few layers of extra blankets. His eyes were acclimated enough now to see the mottled shape of his body. The rest of the room was empty.

He made it to his knees and pulled up his shirt to feel at the wound, the skin pulled tight there with bandages he didn’t remember putting on himself. McCree turned his head to look around with more scrutiny and felt an uncomfortable pull on his throat. He reached up to that. There was what felt like a scab already forming in a thin line over his throat.

It took a moment, and then the memories came back to him like rainwater dripping from a clogged gutter.

McCree got to his feet and found the door on stumbling feet. He wrenched it open. “You,” he accused.

Reaper looked up, maskless and haunting in the dim light of the makeshift safehouse. He sat on the only chair at the only table, all of McCree’s things settled neatly on top of it, illuminated beneath the only lamp. Solar-powered and running low, it buzzed. It reminded McCree of a bug zapper.

“Me,” Reaper said, mild.

He wanted to be angry and tried for a second, then threw in the towel. He swayed on his feet and hit his shoulder to the doorframe, leaning in a slouch there. He almost laughed, but it caught and choked him before he could. If only he had more on than dirty jeans and a ratty button-down and desolation written across his weary face.

“I'm not owing any debts to you,” McCree said. “Not anymore.”

Reaper contemplated. “I’m not asking you to.”

His voice was so even and quiet and it grated like a nightmare. McCree wished instead that he had those shotguns of his pointed his way, or the sharp claws tipping the end of his gauntlets fisted around his neck, or that Reaper would go and put him out of his damn misery already. Their tentative white flag was frayed at all edges, threads picked apart by time and agitation. Jesse hated that he missed him. He hated more that he couldn’t say it out loud, something other than fear curling around in tongue and holding him back.

“They had you drugged,” Reaper intoned, distant and uncaring, like how he used to recite reports from years ago. McCree watched the unreadable flick of his gaze - red, black, always changing nowadays - travel down first to his side, then to his throat. “Sedatives. The strong kind. You couldn't have saved yourself. The sniper tagged you from a distance, and knew to aim for your right arm so the needle would stick. Clever. Don’t ask how those nobodies managed to find a sniper worth their salt.”

McCree bristled, holding his silence. It wasn’t as if it meant anything at all. Reaper hadn’t been killing Talon for his sake. It was just one more shitty group of people that had McCree on their list. He was worth a fuck lot of money these days as it turned out, and everyone knew it. First gang to snatch him up would make more than money. They’d make a _name_.

“The second you dropped, they dug a four-inch blade to your side. And then they took you to a shallow grave and were going to cut your throat to make a point.”

A part of him wanted to step forward and shut Reaper up with a well-aimed punch to the mouth. McCree liked his mortality being discussed with a little more care when it mattered. And he could guess how the rest of it went, and certainly didn’t need the patronization. He could also guess why he ended up here instead of left to bleed out. But he couldn’t just say that any more than he could tell Reaper he missed him, or missed who he was, who they used to be. Life wasn’t so simple. People like them never got to kiss and make up.

“I don’t want you killing anyone for me,” McCree said.

Reaper blinked slowly.

“Don’t give me that fucking _look_.” McCree threw an arm in the air dismissively, a sudden rush of pain to his side making him dizzy. “I can take care of my own damn self without you. If I’d died, fine. I don’t want you _saving_ me,” he spat. “Not like this.”

Reaper gazed at him a little longer. McCree knew that look from years and years of seeing him stare at blueprints and targets and documents and new recruits. It was leveled at him just as often, always when Gabriel really wanted to measure out his words and make it count. McCree braced his left arm against the doorframe and clenched fingers down on it. He imagined breaking it in half.

“Fine.” Reaper’s face slipped for a second when the lamp fizzled into something brighter, a busted circuit or a shitty bulb - and McCree saw fractures, all the pain he knew was written across his own scowl there, a faded question that McCree had left with him to think about for years. “Was it Blackwatch or me?”

And the dead man had the gall to fucking ask it.

McCree’s ribs throbbed, maybe the stab wound opening again. He spied discarded, emptied biotic fields scattered around the room. There was blood dried in drops and smears across the carpet leading towards him. It couldn’t be anyone’s but his.

“It wasn’t you.” McCree’s voice was raw and ragged, emptied of any fire. “Wasn’t ever you.” His head thumped solidly into the doorframe. He sighed something grief-ridden, and then let himself slide down until he was sitting on the floor, eyes raised upwards.

“But it’s me now,” Reaper remarked, restrained despite everything.

“It’s a lot of things nowadays. Things got complicated.”

There was no pretty way to answer that. Honesty was cutting, but after what Gabriel did to him by walking this path, McCree felt he was doing him a mercy. That age-old ache in his chest grew worse than the pain in his ribs, but he couldn’t tell which of them had him shaking like a leaf. He tucked his right arm against himself to hide the tremble to it. Reaper didn’t move from the table, but McCree watched him press fingers against his brow and look away.

McCree had to get it out of his throat, else it might just strangle him. It was only three words in the end, but there was a mountain of emotion behind it. Neither of them were supposed to say it. He couldn’t just go and fuck it up now, but he was long past exhausted by the effort of holding fast. He pushed his forehead against the tops of his knees. The lamp buzzed. The floors settled and creaked, an old, tired home for old, tired bodies.

“I miss you,” he admitted.

He could feel Gabriel watching him again, even without daring to peek. He’d never be able to forget the feeling of it. McCree heard the slide of his leather coat from the wood of the table, the slow trot footsteps coming nearer. He heard, “I miss you, too,” and the hurt stopped biting at his heart.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, thank you for reading!


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